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Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study trends in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last ten years in Germany, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their protection in recent years, with armed guards on their premises and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have cut back on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how at risk our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including necklaces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the crown of Empress Eugénie featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the street on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, carried out by the worker the thief.

More relevant points of reference may be the recent theft of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a £4.75m valuable object from Blenheim Palace the that year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as quickly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to remain intact, specialists say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, commented Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the cultural authorities has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork establishing proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and selling of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an partner informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you get caught, you go to jail. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does reduce the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because modern methods give gems a larger and brighter appearance, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the proof of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to locations with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as close as a city, and find someone to remove the gems,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the institution, with a leaked official review expected to be published soon criticising “considerable” and “persistent” delays in updating systems and noting that surveillance were missing in many rooms. But security experts say showing valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” said Erin Thompson. “They often have large accessible windows that makes it easy for criminals to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which occurred between morning hours local time, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when guards change their shifts and before the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given thieves new methods with which to circumvent security measures. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and breached a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old building had mostly focused on visitor management in recent years, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and currently France lacks sufficient resources.”